Marcie+Mayer

On December 29, 1907, 19-year-old Marcie Mayer died in St. Elizabeth's hospital in Chicago from complications of a criminal abortion. Mary Bing, a midwife, was arrested, tried, and sentenced to Joliet. A man named John Mansfield was also held by the coroner's jury, but acquitted by the judge. Marcie's abortion was atypical in that it was not [|performed by a physician].

A search for more details on Marcie's death has led only to a mystery: The Coroner's Inquest Database lists a Mamie Meyer, rather than a Marcie Mayer, as having died on that date, with the inquest on the same date Mary Bing was held by the coroner. The Cook County Deaths Index says Mamie was born around 1888 in Illinois and was buried in Willmette, Illinois, where she lived. She worked as a domestic servant. As I find more information, I'll add it.

Note, please, that with overall public health issues such as doctors not using proper aseptic techniques, lack of access to blood transfusions and antibiotics, and overall poor health to begin with, there was likely little difference between the performance of a legal abortion and illegal practice, and the aftercare for either type of abortion was probably equally unlikely to do the woman much, if any, good. For more about abortion and abortion deaths in the first years of the 20th century, see [|Abortion Deaths 1900-1909].

For more on pre-legalization abortion, see [|The Bad Old Days of Abortion]

Sources: [|Homicide in Chicago Interactive Database]



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